Surreal Spring: The Cognitive Dissonance of Our Climate Emergency

It’s a glorious spring day showing off Northern California at its finest: daffodils unfurl, while fragrant pink and white blossoms adorn the trees announcing that summer is on its way. Only one problem: it’s actually mid-February. We’re supposed to be in the depths of winter. We’re supposed to be getting regular storms and fighting the occasional frost. It’s a surreal spring.

Gorgeous blossoms emerge in Berkeley, California – in mid-February

Yesterday, the mercury hit 84° F in Berkeley, California. The previous record, set nearly forty years ago, was 73° F. Could be just a chance event, of course. But we know it’s not. It’s the new reality of a climate out of control. We got news the same day that the month of January 2016 was the planet’s hottest month in recorded history.

In the new language of the Anthropocene, this is known as blissonance: the cognitive dissonance of a terrifying world where the bliss of the daffodils is an omen of impending doom. Surreal as it is, this passing moment of beauty tinged with dread is small fry compared with the cognitive dissonance facing our global civilization.

It was just two months ago that world leaders triumphantly announced an agreement that would mark a turning point in humanity’s response to global warming. We need to keep the temperature rise below 2° C, they declared, and target as close to 1.5° C as possible. Meanwhile, the countries of the world submitted plans that put us on track for a temperature rise of 3.5° C by the end of the century. To keep the rise to 1.5° C, which is already 50% higher than what we’re experiencing now, the world’s carbon emissions need to peak by 2020 and reach net zero by mid-century.

Citizens in Auckland protest the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The climate emergency hit the headlines for a few days, and then it was back to the usual: violence in the Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the back-and-forths of the US Presidential primaries. Climate change? At best, another topic for the Democratic debates.

But we can’t afford business as usual. Even incremental improvement is no longer enough. Human civilization is facing a dire emergency, and we keep careening in the wrong direction towards a precipice. Something has to change. It has be profound. And it has to be fast.

There was another time when the civilized world faced a crisis of existential proportions. In the winter of 1941, the Nazis occupied most of Europe, but the United States was staying out of the war. Then, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and everything changed in a moment. President Roosevelt launched a mass mobilization like nothing ever before in history. In 1942, he declared, the U.S. would produce, from a virtual standstill, 60,000 planes and 45,000 tanks. Facing disbelief, he proclaimed: “Let no man say it cannot be done.” And by the end of 1942, American factories had overshot FDR’s ambitious targets.

What we need now, if our civilization is going to survive into the next century, is a similar type of mobilization on a global scale. To that end, the Climate Mobilization movement has put out a call for citizens to “Take the Pledge” and support their demand for a full-scale mobilization that drives the U.S. economy to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, and the global economy to net zero emissions by 2030.

We need to up the ante before the global climate hits the tipping points that will take us over a precipice from where there is no going back. Leading activist organizations, such as 350.org, Avaaz and Greenpeace, know that time is running out, and that’s why they’re joining forces to plan massive civil disobedience in May with the goal of shutting down some of the most dangerous fossil fuel projects around the world. Since our national leaders aren’t taking action to save our civilization, that leadership now has to come from us.

Does the climate emergency strike dread in your heart? Join the movement to Break Free From Fossil Fuels. Take the Pledge to Mobilize. Talk to your friends about it. Get involved in whatever way makes sense to you. Over 50 years ago, Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, launched the modern environmental movement. Perhaps this year’s Surreal Spring will help kickstart the people’s movement that is self-organizing to save humanity’s future.